Following the Fish: Wick exhibition will tell stories of the herring girls
An exhibition will open in Wick next month as part of a heritage project about fisher lassies such as those who helped the town earn its reputation as the herring capital of Europe.
Following the Fish is a joint project run by High Life Highland’s archive service in partnership with Suffolk Archives, the Norfolk Record Office and the Hebridean Archives, Tasglann nan Eilean.
The archive teams have been busy curating both in-person and online exhibitions in advance of two launch events, one of which is in Caithness. It takes place on Thursday, May 8, at Nucleus in Wick, starting at 6.30pm.
Funding for the project was awarded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, allowing the partners to research and tell the story of the herring girls who travelled around the coast.
These hardy women played an important role in the life of fishing towns in Scotland and England. In some cases they married and settled far from home.
The herring girls would travel from port to port from June to September, following fleets of boats to gut and pack fish into barrels for export.
The exhibitions will showcase records from all the archive centres as well as stories, photographs and memories captured through interviews with local people and family members of herring lassies. They include photographs and family stories about Agnes Murray and Jessie Macdonald.
Agnes Murray was born in 1911 and grew up in Ness, Lewis. She left school at 14 and began working as a herring gutter, following the fish around the coast throughout the season.
She married Harry Grant from Wick in 1936 and raised her family in Caithness.
Jessie McDonald was born in 1907. She and her family lived in Kinnaird Street, Wick.
Jessie worked as a packer for Stewart’s fishcurers in their yard at Nicolson Street in Wick and in Great Yarmouth too.
Wick became known as Europe’s herring capital due to the volume of fish landed there. It has been claimed that in 1867, in two days, some 3500 fisher lassies gutted a total of 50 million herring at Pulteneytown harbour.
Wick later had an annual herring queen pageant, with herring queens reigning from 1937 to 1953.